Barricade, Blockade, Occupy to Support Tax Resistance

Tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns have at times made use of
barricades, blockades, and occupations to keep tax collectors at bay. Here are
some examples:

There were a number of prominent “sieges” in the tax resistance campaign
that accompanied the British women’s suffrage movement.
Dora Montefiore barred the arched doorway to her home against the bailiffs
in 1906 and held out for six weeks
before the bailiffs broke through,

…addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.

WSPU meetings were held in front of the house daily, and resolutions
were taken “that taxation without representation is tyranny.” After six
weeks, the Crown was legally authorized to break down the door in order
to seize property in lieu of taxes, a process to which Montefiore
submitted, saying, “It was useless to resist force
majeure when it came to technical violence on the part of the
authorities.”

The “Siege of Montefiore” was a publicity coup for the movement, and
served as a useful rallying point for activists.

On the little terrace of the front garden hung during the whole time of
the siege a red banner with the letters painted in white: “Women should
vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay.”

Kate Harvey barricaded her home in 1912
and it took seven months for the authorities to crowbar their way in and
seize her dining room furniture to auction for back taxes. The following
year they needed battering rams to break her barricade. The Women’s
Freedom League reported, of her first barricade:

Passers-by read the bold declaration that she refuses to be taxed by a
Government that refuses her representation because she is a woman. Her
continued resistance has aroused keen interest in the London and
Provincial Press, and afforded excellent “copy” for numerous
illustrated papers.

and of the second:

An ingenious plan of protection had been devised and carried out, and
the King’s officers wrestled with the fortifications for two hours
before an entry was effected by means of a battering-ram!

A newspaper article gives more details:

Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went
in with a crash. The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where
a still more obstinate door barred the way. A crowbar, battering ram,
and a smail jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it
was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs.
Harvey and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard. Here was little furniture visible,
and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room
that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods. The amount of
the tax, it is understood, is about £15.

When the tax collector and bailiff came to seize goods from Isabella
Harrison,

Mrs. Harrison then gave instructions for the tradesmen’s entrance and
windows to be locked and bolted, and herself opened the inner front
door, closing it behind her and keeping her hand on the handle. The Tax
Collector, who was standing with the bailiff inside the outer front
door, asked if he was addressing Mrs. Darent Harrison, and hoped she
would allow him to execute his trying task and produced his paper. Mrs.
Harrison asked and was told the names of the local magistrates who had
signed the warrant, and explained that her house could only be entered
by force. … The Tax Collector protested that he could not employ force
against a woman — that was quite out of the question. Mrs. Harrison then
suggested that if he did not intend to stand there till he or she
collapsed he must either employ force or call in the police to do so. He
scoffed at the idea of sending for the police, but finally sent the
bailiff to see if he could find any. But no police were to be found. The
bailiff was next sent to get his dinner, and when he returned he
reported “still no police anywhere to be found.” It was a complete
impasse. They had been facing one another for three hours, and the Tax
Collector seemed equally determined to “do his duty” and not to be
guilty of even a technical assault on an elderly woman. It was only
after being taunted with cowardice — with fear of the consequences of
meeting moral with physical force — that he finally made an effort to
get control of the handle of the door, and so with the assistance of the
bailiff to force his way in.

On an earlier occasion, Harrison had barricaded herself inside her home.
Supporters brought her food and supplies by means of a basket she lowered
from a window by a rope.

There is at least one report of similar barricades in the American women’s
suffrage movement. Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed a New York Women’s
Suffrage Society meeting in 1873, and

…narrated several anecdotes of vigorous ladies, who, in the security of
their own castles, had defied all the approaches of the tax collector.
One lady, she said, was in the habit of barricading herself in her house
whenever the tax collector made his appearance, getting into a top room
of the house, and from that coign of vantage, delaying the minion of the
Government with potations from her parlors. [Laughter.] In this case,
Mrs. Blake said it was suspected that the collector had paid the taxes
himself, rather than submit to the convincing streams of the lady’s
eloquence. [Laughter.]

The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.

War tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner refused to leave their
home when it was seized by the
U.S. government
in 1989, defying a federal court order. When
Kehler is arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court, a dozen affinity
groups maintained a round-the-clock occupation of the home through
1992.

During the Dublin water charge strike:

People were told how to block up their stopcocks to make it difficult
for their water to be cut off. Empty bean tins and a little bit of
cement were the necessary ingredients.

In 1922 a group of French syndicalists and
unemployed workers rallied at the home of “two of their comrades who
refused to pay the income tax” and successfully deterred the police and
bailiffs from appearing.

During the Fries Rebellion, officials tried to arrest Henry Shankwyler,
but were foiled by a crowd of fifty supporters, who “went in advance of
the officers, and, reaching the house before them,” intimidated the
marshal into withdrawing without his prey. “Some said if he were taken
out of his house they would fight as long as they had a drop of blood in
their bodies. … Seeing that nothing further could be accomplished there,
the officers took their leave. As they left the house the people set up a
shout and hurrahed for ‘Liberty.’”

Irish “Blue Shirts” held a rally in County Cork to protest government
property seizures against tax resisters, and “[w]hile the conference was
sitting, County Cork farmers felled trees in the roads, cut telephone
wires and made other efforts to prevent further seizure of cattle for
unpaid annuities.” At one point “police fired upon a crowd attempting to
prevent the forced sale of cattle seized for non-payment of taxes,”
killing one.

Una Ridley, an English council tax resister, told a reporter in
2005:

…how the couple had managed to foil efforts by bailiffs to remove
property. “So long as you make yourself secure, close all the downstairs
windows and all the upstairs ones too, the bailiffs cannot make an
entry,” she said.

In Samoa in 1928, officials tried to
arrest Tamasese, the head of the Mau movement, for tax refusal:

…a party of civil police attempted to arrest Tamasese at Apia, but were
prevented by crowds of Mau supporters, who obstructed the police and
managed to get him away in a car. On the
same day, at Vaimoso village, another attempt was made by a party
of civil police at his home. On that occasion the police were covered by
a party of 30 men from the cruisers. Resistance was again made, and the
police and the naval party, to avoid bloodshed, retired. further attempt
to make an arrest was made at the home of Tamasese at Vaimoso on
November 13. The party of six
military police was stoned by women and others, and it retired.

Barricades were used successfully in the battle against Thatcher’s Poll
Tax. In one early case:

Over 300 people turned up outside [Jeannette McGuin’s] house. Banners
were hung out of the window saying “God Help the Sheriffs.” The sheriffs
didn’t show up and Jeannette McGuin never heard another word from them.

In some others:

[I]n Edinburgh over 300 people filled a central high street to prevent a
poinding… 200 activists guarded flats in the Grass Market area… and 150
people guarded 11 flats in Stockbridge and Comely Bank.

In another:

Demonstrators threatened to form a human blockade outside the home at
Irvine of Mr Alex Smith, MEP for Scotland South, who has refused to pay a
£50 penalty imposed for not registering for the community charge.
However, before the protesters arrived, two sheriff’s officers, who
called at Mr Smith’s home, left without trying to force entry after he
refused to let them in.

The very first poinding which was supposed to have been taking place was
in a small village called Pathead…

The back of eight o’clock everybody started coming up, they actually
started running a relay service, a shuttle service with cars going to
collect people, and I’d say by about half-past nine to ten o’clock we
had 110 people standing in the garden. It was a beautiful day, it was
like everybody was sunbathing, having a day out; we stood about there,
everybody singing songs, we had the records on, a couple of them had a
wee drink, things like that, waiting on the sheriff officers coming…

The sheriff officers turned up, got on the phone and, lo and behold, a
police car turned up… So the police came up and asked us if the sheriff
officers could get in and I said, “Well, I’m telling you, under no
circumstances whatsoever are we allowing any sheriff officers into
anybody’s house to carry out a poinding.”

…So the sheriff officers turned around to the police, and says “I want
him arrested, because he’s organising this,” and the police says, “well,
we can’t do a thing.” And everyone in the garden, I says to them, well,
“They want me arrested.” They says, “Well, if you’re getting arrested
then all of us are getting arrested.” And by this time, the local
coalman had come up the road in his lorry, stopped his lorry and blocked
the street. The two guys at the back jumped off, and the coalman who was
driving the lorry, they jumped over the fence and joined us. The local
council workers, who were doing the windows at the time, downed their
tools and got in the garden and supported us. It’s worse than jungle
drums, because the local baker heard it, he came around with his baker’s
van and started dishing out cakes to us. The sheriff officers were
getting quite panicky by this time. The police got in their car and left
the sheriff officers. I told them again. I said, “You’d better get
going. It’s a waste of your time. We know you’re not going to get in, so
there’s nothing else you can do.” … They tried to get in for five or ten
minutes and by this time the crowd were getting quite hostile, and I
says, “I think you’d better go to your car while you’ve still got four
wheels and you’re still able to walk.”

At Bishops Lydeard, people “divided up into small groups, and blockaded
every road into the village.”

Barricades were constructed and every vehicle which tried to enter was
stopped and asked its business. … In the end, the bailiffs didn’t come
near the place.

Poll tax resisters also sometimes occupied or blockaded the offices of
sheriffs and bailiffs.

During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, blockades were used to
obstruct the movement of constables when they were seeking to arrest
resisters, and barricades were used to prevent property seizure. Here are
excerpts from one government investigation of the Annuity Tax disturbances:

…I saw sledge hammers and other instruments there to open the premises
and get at the goods, but after labouring for half an hour or more they
could not effect an entrance.

Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the
metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?

A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against
the back door, and it was impossible for them to get in.

Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the poinded effects
were, so that an entrance could not be had… I found that the room where
the poinded goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room
with boxes filled with plates of iron of immense weight. We were told
that the poinded goods were lying beneath those, and that we might get
at them as we could. I sent for labourers, and had the whole of those
boxes removed into the front shop until I got access, after great
trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were the poinded articles. These
were then declared by the sheriff officers to be of a different
description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded; they
refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some
coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those
were all that were obtained on that occasion.

During the Bardoli satyagraha, farmers famously barricaded their homes
with their cattle inside to protect them from seizure.

When the attachment operations began, minute instructions were issued to
meet every situation. In the beginning only those who had received
notices were to greet the attachment parties with closed doors. Then
whole villages were turned into blackholes, and people who could not put
up with the terrible strain involved were humourously asked to undertake
a pilgrimage. When it was found that in spite of the greatest
precautions, the Pathans managed to carry away carts, break into
enclosures and unhinge closed doors, the Sardar [resistance commander]
said: “Pull your carts to pieces. Keep the body in one place, wheels in
another, and shafts in a third place; make your hedges extra strong with
thorns and bushes; and fortify the doors in such a way that they might
not be able to open them except by breaking them open with axes. Exhaust
them thoroughly.”

In order to save their beloved cattle 80,000 men, women, children with
these cattle have locked themselves up in small and insanitary houses
for over three months. As I passed through villages, silent, empty and
deserted with sentinels posted at different ends, I saw women peeping
through the barred windows to see whether it was the arrival of the
japti [attachment] officer and on being reassured the doors being
opened I was taken inside and I saw the darkness, the stench, the filth;
and the men, women and children who had herded for months in the same
room with their beloved cattle — miserable, lacerated, grown whitish by
disease — and as I heard their determination to remain in that condition
for months rather than abandon their cattle to the tender mercies of the
japti officer I could not help thinking that the imagination
which conceived the dire japti methods, the severity which had
enforced them and the policy which had sanctioned them were difficult to
be found outside the pages of a history of medieval times.

In Alwar, India, in 1932, blockades were used
against tax collectors:

Thousands of armed Hindu Moslem [sic] peasants of
splendid physique with fighting spirit are concentrating in an area of
22 square miles to repel the State tax gatherers.

The roads by which the lorries have been bringing troops have been made
impassable. The paths are blocked by huge boulders…

“Early one morning in 1968 Karl North
(Rochester, N.Y.)
was alerted by neighbors that the
IRS
had seized his car and was about to have it towed for $11.29 in unpaid
telephone tax. Without time to grab his car key, Karl rushed out of the
house and lay down under the car. This disconcerted the
IRS
enough that when they stopped everything to call the police, he ran back
into the house, got the key, rushed back out, and drove the car off.”

Landholders in Tasmania launched a tax strike in
1874, and when the police came with distress
warrants, “Housholders padlocked their gateways, and mastiffs were chained
at the approaches.”

The tax resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in
1874 assembled a force to prevent the jailing
of one of their comrades who had refused to pay a fine.

The Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone began when a king named Bai Bureh assembled
an armed group which successfully defended him against an expected attempt
to arrest him for refusing to pay the Hut Tax — an attempt that a later
government investigator labeled “aggression pure and simple on the part of
the authorities.” Other angry kings and people, inspired by Bai Bureh’s
successful action, rallied to his side.

In 1934, drivers parked their cars in the
middle of the streets in downtown Paris, blocking all traffic for 45
minutes at mid-day to protest a fuel tax.

Property seizures were also used by the British women’s suffrage movement as
opportunities to hold protest rallies or for propaganda. Here are some
examples from the news of the time:

“Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised
the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and
witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions
of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her
taxation. The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but
excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly
mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from
the Muller residence. An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss
Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the
tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.”

“Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes,
conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman
Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he
accepted.”

“A very successful protest was made at Finchley on
May 29 in connection with the seizure
of property belonging to Miss [Sarah] Benett, late
hon. treasurer of the
W.F.L.
By courtesy of the auctioneer, Miss Bennet, was allowed to explain her
reason for resisting payment of taxes. A very successful open-air meeting
was held afterwards.”

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